There's no other way to describe what happened Wednesday night in the state Capitol when, rather than stay in session and finish the job, the Republican-controlled Senate decided its own electoral fortunes were more important than delivering relief to the survivors of sexual abuse perpetrated by clergy in Pennsylvania's Roman Catholic dioceses.

Fortunately, lawmakers have a simple way to make up for that: Return to Harrisburg next week and stay in session until you've done your job.

It's not as if they don't have the time. The Senate's last session day is Nov. 14. The House convenes for a final time this year on Nov. 13.

Lawmakers must reach an accord on legislation to implement the recommendations in Attorney General Josh Shapiro's explosive grand jury report.

They need to approve language that offers survivors outside the existing statute of limitations a two-year window to pursue civil litigation against their abusers and the institutions that enabled that abuse. It is one of the chief recommendations of the grand jury.

It should not be the preposterous amendment that that surfaced Wednesday. It would have limited abuse survivors to suing individual perpetrators but not their respective institutions.

As Shapiro's report made clear, many of the abusers are now dead, and presumably answering to a far higher authority. Those still alive are so impoverished that it would be easier, to borrow a verse, for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than to obtain financial relief.

We'll at least credit the Republican-led state House, under retiring Majority Leader Dave Reed, R-Indiana, with voting 171-23 last month to give the older victims of abuse a retroactive, two-year "window" to pursue cases.

While some Republican senators, notably Sen. John Rafferty, of Montgomery County, were on board with that language, the irresistible force of that bill hit an immovable object in the form of Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson.

It was Scarnati who offered the limited amendment, which collapsed under its own ridiculous weight. When that happened, the Senate judged its work finished and headed home to campaign for re-election.

Lawmakers have shown, in this session - and in the past - that they can get important work done. That includes an anti-hazing bill that Gov. Tom Wolf signed into law on Friday, as well as one that keeps guns out of the hands of domestic abusers. The latter is notable because lawmakers so rarely act to constrain gun ownership.

If you are a Pennsylvania voter whose senator is on the ballot, then your responsibility as a citizen and member of the human race is to confront them and demand that they return to the Capitol and finish this crucial task of providing an avenue to justice to thousands of abuse survivors.

If they do not, they do not deserve your vote.

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